Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.

He was a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a corpse.

I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.

What is past is past. never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.

It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other.

Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.

Michael could never remember his father ever having uttered a word about death, as if the Don respected death too much to philosophize about it.